This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

Rape and sexual abuse in detention

We write further to the Home Affairs Select Committee meeting on Tues 24 June where the
company Serco was asked questions about the rape and sexual abuse of women by guards in
Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre which it runs and where you announced that MPs on the
Committee would visit the Centre to speak to women detained there. As you know, various MPs
appeared to have outstanding concerns about women's safety, after hearing the evidence given by
Mr McGuiness and Mr Thorburn, of Serco's management. David Winnick MP said that there should
be another session for the Committee to take evidence from detainees and their representatives
because he was "not satisfied” and "the allegations are so serious that we can't leave it at that".

Women currently held in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre who want to give evidence to Members of Parliament from the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee about rape and sexual abuse by guards, have issued a set of demands to protect themselves from reprisals. Ms N commented: "It takes a lot of courage to complain about abuse knowing that your life is in the hands of the person you are accusing.”

Multinationals Serco and G4S are being questioned today at 4pm by the Home Affairs Committee about their running of Immigration Detention Centres. High on the agenda must be what Keith Vaz, chair of the Committee called “shocking revelations” of rape and sexual assault in Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre which is run by Serco.

Women who have been held in Yarl’s Wood, some of whom who have been victims of the abuse or witnessed it are attending the hearing to call for the Committee to hear their testimony. They and women currently in Yarl’s Wood are available for interview.

Accounts of sexually inappropriate behaviour include guards offering to assist in immigration cases in return for sexual contact

· Mark Townsend, home affairs editor
· The Observer, Saturday 21 September 2013 23.51 BST
Police are now investigating claims by a detainee known as Tanja that she was subjected to sexually inappropriate behaviour. Photograph: Guy Corbishley/ Guy Corbishley/Demotix/Corbis

Three more women have come forward to corroborate allegations of inappropriate sexual contact between inmates and staff at Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre, including claims that such behaviour is still going on.